mobile payments

This week the folks at Verizon have revealed their new collaborative efforts with Square and the Square Card Reader - mobile payments made utterly easy! This little device plugs in to the headphone jack on your iOS or Android device and allows you to take payments via credit card or Square Gift Card - easy as pie. The actual device costs less than the credit you get on your Square account (good as cash, essentially) at $9.97 (with $10 Square credit on your account when you start it up) - sound alright to you?

Throughout the past year or so, PayPal has been working to make its in-store payment platform more robust by bringing in a number of new retail partners, including Home Depot, Guitar Center, Barnes & Noble, and JC Penney. However, today the company has revealed that PayPal users can now pay for items in over 18,000 physical stores throughout the US.

Just a few days ago, we reported on a leaked update to the Google Wallet app that showed off the service's rumored physical cards. If that wasn't enough to convince you that it's real, Google's own support site talks about the "Google Wallet card" right out there in the open. So while it's not officially announced yet, this thing has to be real.

UK carrier O2 has taken on Square, VeriPhone, and others in the mobile payments space with a new smartphone-enabled system targeted at small businesses and independent vendors. O2 mPOS (Mobile Point of Sale) is a compact chip & PIN terminal that hooks up via Bluetooth to a smartphone or tablet running the companion processing app, and allows for card payments no matter if the vendor isn't even an O2 customer.

Back in May, Groupon purchased Breadcrumb, a point-of-sale system for the hospitality industry meant to erase the clunky systems of past years and replace them with a sleek, affordable iPad app. Breadcrumb offers all the features needed by restaurants, cafes, or bars in a single app, including the ability to process sales using an card swiping attachment for the iPad. Originally offered under a pilot run in New York, this POS app is now available nation-wide.

Starbucks will kick off its Square payments system in early November, with the system expanding to support digital tipping for your favorite barista in summer 2013. The news follows the addition of Starbucks loyalty card to Apple's Passbook in iOS 6, and will see around 7,000 US locations taking the Square Wallet payments from next month.

Mobile payments provider Square will roll out international service by the end of 2012, with the company confirming the roadmap while also announcing a new round of funding. The Series S funding - of which Starbucks is an investor, as previously announced - sees Citi Ventures and Rizvi Traverse Management inject cash into square, which uses simple credit card scanners that plug into the headphone jack of iOS and Android devices.

Isis, the mobile payment service that is the result of a Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile team-up, was supposed to enter into its first round of trial runs later this month. Instead, CNET reports that its developers have hit a few roadblocks, and have now pushed the launch of that first trial run back a bit. We don't know when, precisely, the trial run of Isis will be kicking off now, but we're told that we can expect more news on it soon.

UK carriers Everything Everywhere, O2 and Vodafone are unsurprisingly smug today, after the EC approved their collective mobile commerce plan despite objections from Google and others. The joint venture was announced back in June 2011, a partnership which would build the underlying infrastructure for sales, delivery and payment, but became the subject of a regulatory probe after Google and rival carrier Three objected.

European carrier Orange and Bayclaycard have announced a new team up today that will soon let Samsung Galaxy S III owners make Quick Tap NFC mobile payments with their phones. This new service is headed to the UK, and it will be available to "new and upgrading" Samsung Galaxy S III users on September 5. Orange and Barclaycard are touting the Orange Galaxy S III as "first Android device to feature Quick Tap contactless payment technology."